10 Fun Ways to Stop Video Game Piracy

Published 3 years ago
by
Robert Rodriguez
, Updated February 10th, 2012 at 8:40 pm,

Piracy is one of the scourges of the entertainment industry. It has touched the music, film and television sectors and is only getting worse, especially in the video games industry. Video games have been up on the “I-Want” list for decades, and some have resorted to desperate measures to get their hands on the newest games, and apart from a massive subpoena, the end of video game piracy is seemingly only as possible as having a pet dinosaur. However, game developers are fighting back, but not always in the best way. So, we’ve listed 10 innovative ways to prevent video game piracy.

Rocksteady Studios released Batman: Arkham Asylum in August (360/PS3) and September (PC) of 2009, and the game was lauded as the best comic book adaptation released ever. Obviously, the game was a huge target for video game pirates, but Rocksteady was ready for them: in the Windows version of the game, a bug of sorts was implemented into the programming to subtly alter the pirates’ gameplay experience, by removing the ability to use the gliding feature, a necessary gameplay element as players can only progress by using said ability.

Rocksteady isn’t the first developer to utilize this sort of clever tactic. Electronic Arts used an interesting method with Westwood’s Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 where as time went on, a player with a pirated copy of the game would see their troops in battle progressively lose attack power and accuracy.

These are just some examples of innovate in-game piracy prevention that does not harm the legitimate player’s gaming experience like some of that pesky, invasive DRM. Presented to you now is Game Rant’s Ten Piracy Preventatives We’d Love to See Implemented. But please note, we’re not condoning you or anyone to pirate games just to test anything, nor are we condoning piracy of any kind. It’s illegal, you’re hurting a business and the employees of said business.

Now for the fun stuff!

10.) Duke Nukem Forever: Biting the Hand That… Triggers?

So here’s the deal: You’ve got that nice rifle in your hand. You’ve got it centered on that little guy’s head. You’re ready to fire, and POOF - your big, big gun is flipped in your hand, and your head is across the screen. Imagine not being able to use any weapon, without it turning on you. Sure, it’d be amusing at first, but the novelty would wear off, and that pirated game wouldn’t be as much fun when you’re actually wanting to progress further.

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9.) The Sims (or any God-like game): Spare Change?

You’ve just downloaded The Sims 3. You’re ready for the God experience. You’ve installed the game and you boot it up. Running gorgeously on your machine, the game is everything you were expecting, and you’re ready to make your first family. As you finish up creating them, you go to build them a house in the neighborhood, and when you go to build something, you find your “Build” tab isn’t there. You look around, looking to see if EA moved it, or if it looks different. No, it’s gone. While some play The Sims for fun, others use is as a virtual getaway from real life. Now, anyone who has played The Sims knows that in order to have a toilet, you need a wall. Right there is a prime example of bothering a pirate: no toilets.

36 Comments

how would this stop piracy again? it would just slow it down.
piracy isn’t even a problem in the gaming industry. almost exclusively people who pirate a game were never going to buy it anyway, this is the flaw of virtually every website reporting what piracy does wrong.
i’m not saying piracy is just, but its over exaggerated to epic proportions by media.
Notch the creator of minecraft told a would-be customer to pirate the game because he couldn’t afford it right then. Why? because notch understands piracy.
People use piracy for many many things more then to “steal” ( technically piracy isn’t theft) games.
-test your own PC hardware: not sure if game will run on pc… pirate it!
-benchmarking: I wonder how many FPS i will get max settings Crysis 2, i don’t want the game but i want to know the FPS. pirate it!
-not sure if i like this game: I’d like to rent but i cannot. pirate it!
-Definitely getting this game: but won’t get paycheck for another week. Pirate it!
-This game is a rip off: it only last 12 hours but it cost $60.. rather then wait until it goes down to $10 you can pirate it.
-I used to have this game: I remember roller coaster tycoon, i would like to play it again, lost my CD and CD key though… pirate it, they already have your money.
-I have this game but on a different platform: I have skyrim on the winbox360, but i don’t want to buy it again just to play PC mods, so I’ll pirate it Bethesda already has my money from the xbox version after all.
-improve upload ratio: private torrent sites have a ratio rule that you must upload more then you download. download new game then upload it to improve your ratio, you might never use the file you downloaded(this is rare but it happens).

there i just said 7(the last one is very rare) reasons people pirate which encompasses the vast majority of pirated copies of games.
of course, no one will believe me because the media and your preconceptions are always right.

Yes, pirating is stealing. Why do you even think they call it pirating? Look, if you buy a game, that money goes into the developers pocket. You pirate that game, you have the product, the developer doesn’t have a penny on their end.
I’m not saying I haven’t done it, I have. But pirating a 12 hour game in anticipation for it’s price to go down to 10? Why would you buy it AFTER pirating and beating it? Unless it takes you that long to beat a game, to the point where the games costs the same as a 6 year old game.

“Pirating” is NOT “stealing”. As you pointed out yourself: why do you think we call it piracy? If it’d been theft, we’d call it theft. Case in point: [http://www.knowaguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Piracy-vs-Theft.jpg].

And I’ve bought games after sampling through piracy, several times. If a demo isn’t available, I find other means of testing it. If piracy is the easiest, that’s where I go. If I like the game, and the price is reasonable, I buy.